History 118: US History Since 1877

“I came kicking and screaming. I was saying, “Rural area? No way!”[1]  Susan Witt remembers protesting her move from lively and diverse Cambridge, Massachusetts to a cottage overlooking rolling hills. “I had no connection or experience with place before moving to the Berkshires, and then it kind of hit me full tilt.”[2]

Susan Witt and her husband, Bob Swann at their Berkshires home, 1981.
Courtesy of the Schumacher Center for a New Economics

In 1980, Witt founded the E.F. Schumacher Society (now the Schumacher Center for a New Economics) in rural Massachusetts with her husband, land reform pioneer Robert Swann.[3] Today, the think-tank implements the economic vision of Ernst Friedrich Schumacher in the Berkshires area. Schumacher, a German-born economist “who for years had preached the virtues of a more modest lifestyle,” has faded from national name recognition.[4] Yet, the ideas in Schumacher’s seminal collection of essays, Small is Beautiful influenced a generation of activists in an economy based on institutions that are “too big to fail.” For a moment in the late 1970s, Schumacher’s ideas polarized national attention. Today, the legacy of their is still contested between conservatives and progressives.

In a chapter called “Days of Malaise” in a post-1945 American history book, American Dreams, H.W. Brands described a bleak climax to the oil crisis in the 1970s: “’[t]he party is over,’ Schumacher declared, and millions of Americans nodded in sad agreement.”[5] Schumacher steps into Brands’ history to pull the curtain closed on a dream of growth and consumption. In his preface, Brands observes that at certain points in American history, “the dreams weren’t always sunny and hopeful…[they] began to waver and lose focus”.[6]  Was the emergence of Schumacher and the movements he inspired the end of a dream as Brands frames, or an opportunity for rebalancing in American values?

Schumacher on “Buddhist Economics” (Courtesy of the Schumacher Center, YouTube)

Brands and other survey historians highlight Schumacher’s role in an anti-consumerist counterculture but “Schumacherism” was claimed by groups across the ideological spectrum. Looking back from a festival in 2011 honoring Schumacher’s 100^th birthday and legacy, Green Party politicians, activists, and academics echoed a sentiment that economic crises are an opportunity for radical change.[7] For radicals, “the worse things got, the better for their cause”.[8] Celebrating the same occasion, a conservative commentator contrasts the image of a hippy Schumacher with the economist’s background in Catholic social teaching: “[Schumacher] pleaded that in dealing with the contradictions and tensions of the world we needed wisdom that only the traditional virtues, such as prudence and temperance, can furnish.”[9] These virtues excluded women who “do not need an outside job” in Schumacher’s economy.[10] Small is Beautiful has been interpreted as vindication for both the conservative values of individuality and tradition and the progressive values of collective action and equity. These apparent contradictions break up a familiar understanding of the “Schumacher moment” as a reactive, lifestyle counterculture (see transcript excerpt below). Brands fairly displays what Schumacher was against but a diversity of groups and individuals involved in this period better discuss what the movement stood for.

“My entry was a pretty personal approach but I entered right into…the beginnings of a national movemen, so I’ll describe my personal entry but that’s not as important as the work I moved into,” prefaces Witt.[11] She remembers when the impact and collective identity of the “Baby Boomer” generation was recognized as TIME Magazine’s Man of the Year in 1966. She felt that she could go anywhere in the world and feel safe amongst peers – a global citizen.[12] A cosmopolitan identity contrasted with a rejection of urban life for members of the “back to the land” movement. Witt’s generation, who “sought fulfillment in personal reconstruction” over materialism, added momentum to Schumacher’s message.[13]

A generational feeling of fellowship complemented Witt’s specific education. A literature teacher, Witt found appreciation for the communal in her reading of “great books,” from Beowulf to Dostoyevsky.[14] The economy tells a story but Witt wasn’t convinced by its abstraction during a time when “the American economy seemed to have careened right off the curve into uncharted territory.”[15] Brands is referring to the Philips curve, an economic narrative which reassured policymakers that high unemployment would balance with low inflation and vice versa. Stagflation, when inflation and unemployment increased together, broke the logic of this story. Schumacher’s proposal for economic development centered on labor rather than capital-intensive “appropriate technologies” appealed to an economy looking for new answers in uncharted territory.

Witt turned on the radio, heard this message, and her life changed. In 1976, Witt’s grandfather passed away, leaving an inheritance which allowed her to take time off from teaching to explore where heroism exists in American society. She identified alternative economists as agents for social change because “the element America swims in is the economic.”[16] So, when Witt heard Bob Swann speaking about Schumacher’s vision for development, she drove to Swann’s Institute for Community Economics in Cambridge. Here, she staffed a Community Investment Fund, which stands as a rejection of Brands’ negative depiction of “sad agreement.”

Socially responsible investing coordinated post-war wealth with community projects. Witt makes an important distinction between the Community Investment Fund and screened investment funds – the Cambridge project made positive investments in renewable energy, cooperative experiments, and local businesses. Far from shaking her head, Witt remembers “a bubbling up of enthusiasm” for these Projects. [17] Although the Fund folded in 1979, departing board members “encouraged efforts…that became major vehicles that started the movement around social investing.”[17] Yet like other experimental projects, critics point out that this model for change was driven primarily by wealthy donors. Witt remembers a generation of new wealth, twenty-somethings who would come to the Cambridge office and whisper, “I just inherited a lot of money and I don’t want to use it like my parents did. Do you have some place to invest?”[18]

“Guilt money” does not fully illuminate the momentum behind Schumacher’s impact. Interest rates peaked again in the 1980s, approaching 20 percent.[19] Witt and Swann had just moved to the Berkshires and found local businesses crippled by an inability to get low-cost bank loans. The fledgling Schumacher Center implemented a micro-credit program, Self-Help Association for Regional Economy (SHARE), in which “citizens in the region contributed to a community savings account that stood as collaborative collateral for small loans the bank wouldn’t normally make.”[20] Witt was astonished when she reviewed the account to find micro-contributions from poor members of the community eager to help borrowers like them. The revelation follows a similar logic to inner city immigrant communities or rural African-American cooperatives lending amongst themselves, Witt observes. This history of communal, low-income involvement complicates a narrative that Schumacher’s ideas have been primarily implemented by a new middle-class.

Witt (left) at the SHARE office (date unknown)

Schumacher’s impact was not limited to popular movements and start-ups – for a time these ideas drove national dialogue. Swann helped coordinate the Small is Beautiful book tour which brought Schumacher to America. Despite high-level endorsements, concert hall audiences, and best-seller status, however, his ideas did not drive national action. President Carter, (in)famous for his condemnation of consumerism, was well aware of the limits to growth as articulated by Schumacher and the Club of Rome.[21] Brands focuses on Carter’s critics but sociologist Amitai Etzoni identified the president’s mandate: at this time “31 percent of Americans were “anti-growth” and 39 percent were highly uncertain.”[22] On March 22, 1976, President Jimmy Carter hosted Schumacher in the Oval Office. Democratic Senators Lee Metcalf and James Abourzek followed up with the president, urging that “the government should instead be encouraging the development of those approaches that offer real long-term solutions to our environmental, social and energy problems.”[23] One year later, California Governor Jerry Brown spoke at the economist’s funeral. Schumacher’s legacy seemed secured when Ronald Reagan railed against inappropriate scale. “Bigness robs the average citizen of his rightful voice,” Reagan claimed as a radio commentator in 1976.[24] Despite cuts within the government, the pendulum swung back toward consumerism and unrestricted capital during the Reagan administration.[25] As Schumacher faded from national attention, critics and supporters alike wondered if his call to “put our inner house in order” was enough for radical change.[26]

President Carter on consumerism (Courtesy of YouTube)

From Todd Gitlin’s “Small is Beautiful: Brown’s Economic Guru” 1976

The Trump brand gained prominence during the pendulum swing toward consumerism and bigness during the 1980s. The introductions of “bigly” and “yuge” into presidential vocabulary could not be further from Carter’s recognition of limits. President Trump’s victory was driven in part by malaise in manufacturing communities with a lack of community development that Schumacher would have likely decried. Grassroots trends toward localism have restored Schumacher’s vision but his impact is felt beyond the activist left.

Click here for information about Dickinson College’s socially responsible investment strategy.

Timeline:

[1] Phone interview with Susan Witt, April 14, 2017

[2] Phone interview with Susan Witt, April 14, 2017

[3] Biography of Susan Witt, Schumacher Center for a New Economics [WEB]

[4] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 197

[5] Brands, 197

[6] Brands, ix

[7] Jonathan Watts, “Mood of possibility defines E F Schumacher centenary festival” (The Guardian, 2010) [WEB]

[8] Brands, 228

[9] Joseph R. Wood, “Retroview: A Countercultural Conservative” (The American Interest, Volume 6, Number 6, 2011) [WEB]

[10] E.F. Schumacher, “Buddhist Economics” Small is Beautiful (Harper & Row, 1975), 57

[11] Phone interview with Susan Witt, March 29, 2017.

[12] Phone interview with Susan Witt, March 29, 2017.

[13] Robert M. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (Oxford University Press, 2000) [GOOGLE BOOKS]

[14] Phone interview with Susan Witt, April 14, 2017

[15] Brands, 197

[16] Phone interview with Susan Witt, March 29, 2017

[17] Phone interview with Susan Witt, April 14, 2017

[18] Phone interview with Susan Witt, March 29, 2017

[19] Phone interview with Susan Witt, March 29, 2017

[20] PBS Business Desk interview with Paul Solmon, “What Led to the High Interest Rates of the 1980s?” (PBS News Hour, 2009) [WEB]

[21] Phone interview with Susan Witt, March 29, 2017

[22] W. Carl Biven, Jimmy Carter’s Economy: Policy in an Age of Limits (University of North Carolina Press, 2003), 257

[23] Bill McKibben, Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet (Macmillan, 2010), 93

[24] Lee Metcalf and James Abrozek, “Letter to President Jimmy Carter” (United States Senate, 1976) [WEB]

[25] William Greider, “Ronald Reagan: The Giantism Killer” (The Washington Post, 1981) [WEB]

[26] Greider

[27] E.F Schumacher, 297

Todd Giltin, “Small is Beautiful: Brown’s Economic Guru” (Mother Jones Magazine, 1976) [GOOGLE BOOKS]

Selected Transcript: Who was Schumacher?

Susan: [Schumacher] was an economist – what motivated him was economic thinking. He once said that he was in London watching lorries with Scottish biscuits being delivered at the same time watching lorries leaving London for Scotland with English biscuits. He said, “that’s just not economically sound.” We should be producing locally for local consumption as much as possible. So that’s the kind of thing that motivated him. At the same time, he called himself an energy economist because he worked for the English Coal Board and headed it. He realized that fossil fuels were disappearing and an economic system dependent on them would also disappear. It’s more the economist in him that came to that [conclusion] rather than simple living prophet which suggests more from a more lifestyle concern. It was this economic awareness permeating his thinking and his actions.

Sam: Where are the trends that mobilize Schumacher’s way of thinking today? Some of his work has been marginalized, Schumacher is no longer a household name. How would you explain the movement to a new audience?

Susan: Well, the “buy local” movement isn’t marginalized, that’s huge. While originally someone like Schumacher had deep philosophical and economic reasons or analysis that brought him to this, often the “buy-local” movement has become just a quality of life movement. So, [the attitude is that] the local beer is better rather than it creating a broader intention of serving all people – the overarching vision of the brotherhood of all mankind. We do our work hoping all people will have a better life [but that] has not quite gotten there. It’s still my quality of life, my personal quality of life. So I think that’s up to all of us who work in this movement, if you will, to make the broader connections, to bring in the responsibility again to all humankind. The responsibility to all places, not just our place. That’s up to us to tease that out of the simply “buy local movement” …we blame ourselves or see it as our responsibility to bring that out.

Sam: The popular image is that lifestyle argument but you’re saying it’s about something bigger.

Susan: Right, and it’s also about the consumer taking responsibility to help the producer… Instead of just sitting back and saying “if they produced it locally, I’d buy it.” Instead, it’s actually creating the conditions where the producer can thrive – the land, the legal permits, the technology, the marketing – how can we help make that happen? So citizens as active members and engagers in the economic system rather than as passive consumers.

By Amy Sparer

When Harlan Sparer was a high-schooler in Bellmore, Long Island in the early 1970’s, his mother had come up with a plan, as many mothers of soon-to-be –draft- eligible young men in the midst of the Vietnam War draft era might have done. She had begun thinking it up in the sixties, when the war began. The plan? “… for me to go to medical school in Canada when I got drafted, so that I would instantly become a Canadian citizen (…).” Sparer explained. [1] Upon noticing this, Sparer began to think about himself in relation to the conflict.  “I was coming to an age where they would actually want to include me in their lovely war and I realized I really kind of didn’t want to die,” he explained “As I’m watching the Vietnam War unfold I realize there’s really no logical reason for us to be there,” Sparer remembers [2], echoing the thoughts of many Americans at the time. In his historical review, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945, H.W. Brands explains that even members of “the establishment” began to question US involvement in Vietnam, including J. William Fullbright, a Democratic senator from Arkansas, who conceded “We just don’t belong there”. [3]

Long hair and facial hair were popular for those in the countercultural movement, as shown by Harlan Sparer (left) next to his younger brothers.

The persistence of this possibly useless war led to growing sentiment against the war – notably from a growing group of people who, as Brands describes, “embraced a lifestyle as far at odds with the prevailing middle-class culture as they could make it” complete with long hair, groovy music, unkempt clothing, and a particular proclivity for illicit substances. [4] Sparer cites such substances as his introduction into the hippie lifestyle: “When I started to actually buy and sell drugs, which is the best way, I figured out, to have them on hand whenever I wanted, I began getting involved with the counterculture,” he explained. “… after I started smoking marijuana, you know, everyone that I hung out with was against the war pretty much.” [5] He and his friends, who proclaimed themselves “United Mutations”, hung out in the band room, smoked, discussed the war, and associated with “various other sort of little gangs of itinerant, strange, hippie-type people that were countercultural in nature (…).” [6] This lifestyle was often recorded at college campuses, but Sparer’s experiences were strongly associated with his high school years. This was not necessarily uncommon either – high schoolers’ association with the countercultural revolution of the 1960s and early 1970s is documented – particularly in terms of activism. [7] It took a specific turn, though, especially due to the age and place in society of the individuals involved. According to Dionne Dann’s review of Gael Graham’s Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protest, “the internal structure of high schools, along with the movements within the larger society, shaped the opportunity for high school students to scrutinize their place in society (…) despite the lack of a centrally organized movement, high school student activism was a “rights revolution” (p. 9) in which the students demanded increased rights within the framework of the high school.” [8]

Harlan Sparer representing his group: “United Mutations”

“Demanding increased rights within the framework of the high school” [9] is exactly what Sparer did. He and his friends’ first protest was against the decision of the school to limit access to the band room – “they didn’t want to let us go hang out in the music room after we were done eating lunch. (…) We got a bunch of people together and we just stared down the lunch ladies – we just stood around them and surround them and just gaped and stared. (…) After a while, with 30 kids surrounding them, they got uncomfortable and walked away and we went to the band room and that was the end of that rebellion, it worked pretty well.” [10] From here, Sparer’s high school activism continued, and became more political.  As Brands asserted, “The counterculture, as the phenomenon was called, wouldn’t have been so much of a counterculture if it meekly bowed to the opposition.” [11] True to this, Sparer and his friends founded an underground newspaper entitled “The Daily Mutation” with the help of their acquaintance, Irma, a young woman who belonged to Women Strike for Peace (WSP) and who had access to a Gestetner printing machine. [12] The paper, distributed mostly without school approval much to the chagrin of the Mepham High School administration, was “kind of goofy and kind of silly and kind of absurd” but was decidedly anti-war, even including advertisements for draft counseling in each issue. [13]

“The Daily Mutation” : Note the lower left hand section about Draft Counseling

Meanwhile, the war in east was looking dire once again. In 1970, Nixon expanded war activities into Laos and Cambodia in an attempt to carve into where the North Vietnamese troops had been taking shelter. [14] This decision was met with spectacular outrage. Brands asserts, “these efforts (…) got the attention of the antiwar movement in America. The Cambodian invasion sparked the largest protests of the war.” [15] Student protesting reached a new and terrifying high: violence broke out with student casualties occurring at both Kent State in Ohio and Jackson State in Mississippi. [16] By 1972, things were not looking up. The North Vietnamese launched the “Easter Offensive” that spring. [17] According to the Office of The Historian, Nixon’s response was to send “massive air force and naval reinforcements to bases in Indochina and Guam.” [18] The combination of these activities resonated with Sparer and his activist friends.

The gears began to turn.  “…we decided kind of had enough of Mr. Nixon and we kind of had enough of all this BS,” Sparer explained. [19] “…with proper lubrication with the correct amount of marijuana, we decided we were going to have a protest. We were going to organize a protest for the next week and we were going to have seven converging marches. So, we got people in each of three high schools and four junior high schools and we got them all to plan this march with us (…) we ended up meeting at Wellington C. Mepham High School, which was the most centrally located school – so all these different marches converging”, Sparer elaborated. [20] On the day of the protest, Wednesday, April 19^th 1972, [21] the student protesters marched to Mepham High prepared for police intervention. Sparer recounted the event: “We went in a single file, a thousand of us and we surround the grassy field on the sidewalk and then when we gave the word (…) everyone rushed the grass and there were only 20 cops to try and stop us. Needless to say, they couldn’t physically stop the rush of a thousand high school and junior high school kids. So, we all sat on the lawn and the cops took out their bullhorn and said “You must disperse immediately, you’re all going to be arrested!” and a thousand kids, in unison, just broke into spontaneously “Hell no, we won’t go! Hell no, we won’t go!” (…)  The cops took us aside – they said “you’re obviously the leader of this group, come over here, we want to have a talk with you.” And so this cop paternalistically says to me and my friend Mark and my friend Jeff – “you guys! You can’t be on this school, we’re going to have to arrest all of you! Why don’t you just gather at the end of that cul-de-sac over there and we won’t bother you and you can have your demonstration over there.” [22] Sparer recalls his reply: “I said “what jail are you gonna put a thousand high school students in and how is that gonna look for you? You’re gonna have to book a bunch of underage kids, you know, you’ll have to deal with all the laws around arresting a minor. Where are you gonna put minors? You can’t put them in the jail. You don’t know what you’re talking about, you can’t incarcerate us. Now, we’re gonna go back to our demonstration. Have a great day.”[23] The protest made the front page of Long Island, New York’s local paper, Newsday, where they described the Mepham protest and local college protests in response to the renewed bombing campaign of Indochina. [24]

Newsday, April 20th 1972 : The Mepham High protest made the headlines

While the countercultural and activist mindset followed Harlan Sparer past his high school years, he conceded that the political aspect of the movement largely dissolved soon after the Mepham High protest when the war ended in ’73. [25] “I think generally speaking, somewhere between ’69 and ’70, there was a very big countercultural revolution that took place with anyone that was junior high school age or older where people kind of changed over and shifted over. By the mid-70s, I think, that effect was complete. The Vietnam War, when it ended, changed things a bit but it had already taken hold, and it slowly petered out in terms of the politics of it (…) by the late 70s, early 80’s it had pretty been done as far as it being a movement. There were people, you know, thinking it was groovy to do this or do that, but it wasn’t the same as when there was a political ideology attached to the marijuana smoking, to the wearing the jeans, to the wearing the t-shirt.” [26] It’s hard to say whether high school student activism had very direct influence on the Vietnam War or it’s ending. It can be hypothesized that protests in general influenced the decision making process of attempts to get out of the war. Either way, it’s clear that the work and attitudes of the counterculture population along with other anti-war activists in general impacted perceptions of the era of a whole.

Footnotes

[1] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[2] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[3] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 153.

[4] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 146.

[5] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[6] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[7] Dann, Dionne. Review: Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protests by Gael Graham. History of Education Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2007): 510

[8] Dann, Dionne. Review: Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protests by Gael Graham. History of Education Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2007): 510

[9] Dann, Dionne. Review: Young Activists: American High School Students in the Age of Protests by Gael Graham. History of Education Quarterly 47, no. 4 (2007): 510

[10] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[11] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 147.

[12] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[13] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 29, 2017

[14] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 170.

[15] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 170.

[16] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 170.

[17] Office of The Historian. “Ending the Vietnam War, 1969-1973.” (Last Modified????) https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/ending-vietnam

[18] Office of The Historian. “Ending the Vietnam War, 1969-1973.” (Last Modified????) https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/ending-vietnam

[19] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[20] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[21] “War Protests, Student Strikes Spread.” Newsday, April 20, 1972, 17.

[22] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[23] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

[24] “War Protests, Student Strikes Spread.” Newsday, April 20, 1972, 17.

[25] Office of The Historian. “Ending the Vietnam War, 1969-1973.” (Last Modified????) https://history.state.gov/milestones/1969-1976/ending-vietnam

[26] Phone Interview with Harlan Sparer, April 22, 2017

Selected Transcript:

INTERVIEW 1: 4/22/2017

Now, I know that you were involved in sort of the countercultural movement in your high school years – can you just tell me more about what you were involved with?

“… my involvement with the counterculture began when I started smoking pot…when I started to actually buy and sell drugs, which is the best way, I figured out, to have them on hand whenever I wanted, I began getting involved with the counterculture. At that point, I started hanging out with my friends, who we later called ourselves “United Mutations” unlike all the other kids in high school back then who were all really interested in the grateful dead, or were interested in cars- those were the greasers, the hippies were involved with the grateful dead – and then the jocks were involved with athletics, of course, and the geeks were the ones that persisted – all they did was do math basically and hang out. And of course, I used to do some interesting stuff. We would get together periodically and get together in the band room- that was kind of a fun thing I would do (…) we would invent songs, and write and have lots of fun- playing music and inventing music and jamming (…) In the lunch room, I met my friends Mark and Scott and later Jeff and we ended up finding out that we each liked Frank Zappa (…) we started a garage band. This is because, in the 1970s, everyone had a garage band. And one of the things you did in the 70s was you’d get together with your friends and the notable time we’d get together with our friends was, of course, when our parents weren’t home, and then we’d have everyone leave just as the parents, just before the parents would arrive, hopefully, although in some cases that didn’t happen. So, we used to hang out with a group of people, we used to hang out, alternatively, at Jones Beach in the summer and at this park called Eisenhower Park, which used to be called Salisbury Park. This is in Nassau County, of course. And we would get together with these people, and, you know, we’d gradually got involved with both our rock band and our friends which were called the “Jones Beach Bums” which were a combination of groups like “the wheat chips” and “united mutations” and various other sort of little gangs of itinerant, strange, hippie-type people that were countercultural in nature (…).

Later on in school, we had the infamous lunch protest – that was the first protest we did. What they decided was that they didn’t want to let us go hang out in the music room after we were done eating lunch. (…) We got a bunch of people together and we just stared down the lunch ladies – we just stood around them and surround them and just gaped and stared. (…) After a while, with 30 kids surrounding them, they got uncomfortable and walked away and we went to the band room and that was the end of that rebellion, it worked pretty well. Drunk with our power, of course, later on, something else happened – Kent State happened, and, you know, four college students got shot by national guardsman in Ohio and Nixon announced that he was going to Bomb Cambodia. This is during the Vietnam War, and we decided kind of had enough of Mr. Nixon and we kind of had enough of all this BS, so we got together at this guy John’s house (…) of course with proper lubrication with the correct amount of marijuana, we decided we were going to have a protest. We were going to organize a protest for the next week and we were going to have seven converging marches. So, we got people in each of three high schools and four junior high schools and we got them all to plan this march with us. And of course one high school we’d march to, so they just were involved with shutting down the school (…) we ended up meeting at (…) Wellington C Mepham High School, which was the most centrally located school – so all these different marches converging. Now, we knew, as we were getting high, that the cops didn’t want us to close down the school and they were gonna try and stop us. So, we devised a plan: what we were gonna do was surround them, ‘cause we figured there was going to be around a thousand of us at least and they would only be around 10 or 20 cops. Well, we weren’t surprised: turns out there were about 20 or 30 cops and of course they bravely stood by the lawn in front of the school -We were all gathered kind of in a loosely aggregated group in the street – saying “you can’t get on the lawn, you have to go back”. We, of course, had our plan, so we did with this particular school (…) an old 1940’s built school – it had this big sidewalk surrounding the school and then it had these grassy fields surrounded by sidewalk (…). We went in a single file, a thousand of us and we surround the grassy field on the sidewalk and then when we gave the word (…) everyone rushed the grass and there were only 20 cops to try and stop us. Needless to say, they couldn’t physically stop the rush of a thousand high school and junior high school kids. So, we all sat on the lawn and the cops took out their bullhorn and said “You must disperse immediately, you’re all going to be arrested!” and a thousand kids, in unison, just broke into spontaneously “hell no, we won’t go, hell no, we won’t go.” And we kept saying that, of course. Needless to say, our disruption in the high school worked and everyone started hanging out the windows wondering what the heck was going on, because they knew what was going on, because they had been told – they’re like “Oh cool! It’s a demonstration!” and the cops took us aside – they said “you’re obviously the leader of this group, come over here, we want to have a talk with you.” And so this cop paternalistically says to me and my friend Mark and my friend Jeff – “you guys! You can’t be on this school, we’re going to have to arrest all of you! Why don’t you just gather at the end of that cul-de-sac over there and we won’t bother you and you can have your demonstration over there.” It’s a dead-end street, they wanted to let us sit on the concrete. And I said to the cop, I said “listen”, I said “what jail are you gonna put a thousand high school students in and how is that gonna look for you? You’re gonna have to book a bunch of underage kids, you know, you’ll have to deal with all the laws around arresting a minor. Where are you gonna put minors? You can’t put them in the jail. You don’t know what you’re talking about, you can’t incarcerate us. Now, we’re gonna go back to our demonstration. Have a great day.” And we walked back over and sat we down. We had our demonstration and we closed down the school.

Would you say the main motivation for that was the Kent State shooting?

Yeah, it was that and the Cambodia bombing.

What were your opinions, specifically, about the Vietnam War at that point?

Well, you know, it started a while back when they first started the Vietnam war in the 60s and I noticed that my mother had a plan – she had this plan for me to go to medical school in Canada when I got drafted, so that I would instantly become a Canadian citizen (…). As I’m watching the Vietnam War unfold I realize there’s really no logical reason for us to be there – and this was before I had become politically active in any way at all. And as time went on it became more of a focal point as I realized I was coming to an age where they would actually want to include me in their lovely war and I realized I really kind of didn’t want to die. Dying wasn’t me, as Woody Allen would say. That’s just not me. And so, I realized that I didn’t like this idea of a war and as time went on and I became a little more politically astute – although in 1968 in the student election I had voted for Richard Nixon, by the time 1969 came around, I started listening to what was happening with Eugene McCarthy and with the countercultural movement and I became infinitely more sympathetic as I titled more in that direction from just the media, my surroundings, my peers and it moved me to the point where after I started smoking marijuana, you know, everyone that I hung out with was against the war pretty much. Everyone pretty much came of a political nature. We all wanted to wear t-shirts and blue jeans and, you know, not be dressed up and, you know, not be like everybody else was. We wanted to be countercultural and I think generally speaking, somewhere between ’69 and ’70, there was a very big countercultural revolution that took place with anyone that was junior high school age or older where people kind of changed over and shifted over. By the mid-70s, I think, that effect was complete. The Vietnam War, when it ended, changed things a bit but it had already taken hold, and it slowly petered out in terms of the politics of it. The marijuana smoking, of course, continued for a while afterwards. But by the late 70s, early 80’s it had pretty been done as far as it being a movement. There were people, you know, thinking it was groovy to do this or do that, but it wasn’t the same as when there was a political ideology attached to the marijuana smoking, to the wearing the jeans, to the wearing the t-shirt.

(… )the war pretty much wound down and ended. Pretty much as that went on. It wound down… basically it wound down because we lost. So, people didn’t make as big a deal out of it because they realized it was gonna end anyway. But it was upsetting to everybody because there were all these people getting killed and why? What were we gaining out of that?

(…) There was a special handshake we had. Oh yeah, if you were in the counterculture, you gripped the other person’s thumb. It was a different handshake, and you knew someone was cool when they gave someone that handshake. So there was that. Clothing was really important too. There was a dress code. It was funny because Burnt Weenie Sandwich, that first album I had? This guy is screaming at this cop and says “you’re wearing a uniform, take off your uniform!” and Zappa makes fun of the guy. He says, “everyone in this room is wearing a uniform and don’t kid yourself.” Because it was the uniform at the time was a t-shirt and a pair of jeans – and the jeans had to be kind of raggedy- like not new. Worn jeans and a t-shirt – that was the uniform. Or a pair of cutoff shorts, it had to be denim. So that was the uniform. There were bellbottoms too. But see, the thing is that everyone wore bellbottoms after the fact. But in 1970 and 71 it was a statement to wear bellbottoms.

(…)It was all nonviolent protests. No one was hurting anyone no one was advocating hurting anyone we were just expressing ourselves in a nonviolent fashion. (…) I think we should all be able to express our opinion no matter what it is. As long as we’re not advocating harming another person. Now, when you wanna advocate harming somebody, its no longer non-violent protest. But, you know, we took a page out of Gandhi’s work and later Martin Luther King’s work by what we did and I think that nonviolent protest to this day is a very effective means of protest. (…) So, yeah, there’s nothing wrong with nonviolent protest. We did a lot of that. And that was a hallmark of the countercultural movement. It was that, it was marijuana and it was music. Those were the three big things that happened together, along with our dress code – and free love. (…) no harm to anybody – just fun and enjoyment and pleasure.

INTERVIEW 2: 4/29/17

I know that you had organized an underground newspaper. Can you tell me a little more about that?

“We had this band at the time, and we had just started, it was a little garage band called ‘The Magic Lepers”. And we were really enjoying having the band. And we decided one day that it would be fun to have an underground newspaper (…) and we wanted it to be political, too – against the war. So we got a hold of this woman, Irma Zeigus (spelling?), who we had run into from our anti-war activities, from my political activities. And Irma Zeigus was the local head of this organization called Women Strike For Peace, which was an antiwar organization of adults. And they happened to have a Gestetner stencil machine (…) and that’s how you printed things back then. (…) and so we seriously began writing, and we had several of us all writing together and having a good time with it. (…). We got the copies fresh off the presses from Irma, and it had dried out properly and we went right to the parking lot where all the students at the high school were and everyone knew it was coming and they were all anxious to read it. And in the morning, right before school, we just started giving it out to everybody. (…) At one point, I had built up enough of a reputation at Mepham High School that the vice principle there, who wasn’t the tall, broad shouldered type, but he was kind of a hatchet guy – his name was Thomas McQuillan and he was their enforcer – so we went to some program and I went there with my cabbie’s cap and my long pigtails to “Rap ‘n’ Rec” it was called – it was like, you know, for teenagers to hang out, it was an anti-drug thing. So of course we would all smoke lots of pot and then go to Rap ‘n’ Rec. It wasn’t exactly working as they thought. Bu, anyway, so I go in there and McQuillan says to me, “take your hat off!” and I said “no”. He said “I want you to take your hat off! You’re in a public place, take your hat off!” and I said “ No! I don’t have to take my hat off, it’s a free country.” And I proceed to walk. So he calls over his janitor – his name was Bumpy. Bumpy got a hold of me and started beating up on me, threw me out of the Rap ‘n’ Rec and threw my hat, which fell off, after me. Needless to say, we had the power of the press. So the next day I wrote an article called “Hats off to you, McQuillan!” (…).  We had a good time with the underground newspaper and people enjoyed reading it and it was kind of goofy and kind of silly and kind of absurd. And there was always something about draft counseling and anti-war in it. So, that’s kind of how we rolled back then in the underground newspaper world.

(…) “My mother got a phone call (…) he said “you realize your son organized this demonstration! And he’s a communist!” She said “I’m proud of what my son did and I support what he did! So, you know what? I don’t care! And she smashed down the phone on “The Cobe”. And “The Cobe” probably didn’t know what to do at that point, because his terror program was not going to succeed.”

 Do you think that there was a cultural gap there generationally generally?

I think there was one of them with the hippie movement (…) that was a massive generational change. (…) I think you see the very beginning of that change in the 60s when, you know, people were watching TV a lot and TV started to influence them. Music started to influence them and you know music was a massive influence in the late 60s. The use of marijuana also had a very very significant effect, in my opinion because I know for me, culturally, when I started smoking pot with everybody, that’s when I started to change my attitude. And it wasn’t the marijuana itself that was doing it, frankly, because if it were, it would continue to make changes. But it was the coupling of the countercultural movement with that and the fact that it was illegal. And you know even though we were protesting against the marijuana laws in the 1970s, you don’t really see the impact of those protests in the 1970s. but when those people grew up now you start to see the impact of those people. Those people now are in a position where there are a lot more of us and we’re more in a position of influence.

What actually happened to the American Medicial Students?

By: Dana Marecheau

Dr. Merle Collins, now a professor at the University of Maryland, was heavily involved in the Grenadian Revolution. She is most known for working within the Grenadian Government as the Coordinator of Research on Latin America and the Caribbean. She later left Grenada in 1983, the same year of the American Intervention.[1] During our interview, Dr. Collins mentions, “People [general public of Grenada] were less concerned with ideological discussions [by the Coard / Bishop factions] than with the everyday rewards they could see – more access to education, more scholarships for their children, whether those scholarships were in Cuba, Britain, India or the Soviet Union. Today there are many excellent doctors and civil service personnel in Grenada, trained in Cuba during that period of radicalization”.[2] This sparked my interest considering that H.W. Brands in his book, American Dreams, mentions that the U.S feared the growing relationship between Grenada, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. This was triggered by the construction of an “unusually long runway, one suitable for heavy Soviet transport or tourist-filled airliners [as Bishop rejoined]”.[3] Brands provides the reader with minimal details about the events prior to and after the American Invasion. Further intrigued by lack of details H.W. Brands provides and Dr. Collins’ comment, I went on to interview Rubert Bishop. His memories of the American Intervention, provides additional information that challenges the accounts publicized by the American government.

Rubert Bishop worked at the Grenada Prison Service as a prison guard. During his time as a prison guard, Maurice Bishop was the prime mister. Rubert recalled his rise to political power; to him the most memorable televised speech made by Maurice Bishop was one regarding education reform. Rubert describes Maurice Bishop as a “dynamic speaker”, then he exclaimed, “The tone of speech, and so on, the fluency in speech, and the knowledge of the topics were remarkable! He was one of the best I have ever heard”.[4] On March 13, 1979, Maurice Bishop seized power with the support of the New Jewel Movement.[5] When the U.S. refused to provide aid for military defense and offered only limited economic assistance, Maurice Bishop sought out help from other countries, Cuba being one of them. [6] The U.S. viewed this act as threatening, but to Rubert, Maurice Bishop was concerned about developing his country and would take assistance from anyone to do just that.[7]

Brands mentions that “Maurice Bishop had cultivated warm relations with Cuba”,[8] but the objective of this relationship was misconstrued. Maurice Bishop and his party implemented socialist programs on the island, and he continued to receive support from Cuba. One result of this program included the increase in the literacy rate, which went from 85%, to about 98%.[9] While working at the prison, Rubert facilitated a literacy program for prisoners that aided in the increase of literacy rates in Grenada. The supplies utilized in this literacy program, which consisted of books and other education tools, were provided by Cuba. Rubert remembers how impressed he was by one prisoner who took advantage of the opportunity to receive his “old levels”- an equivalate to a high school degree. Rubert said, “We were able to get the papers for him to study, and take the test, and so on”. [10] Cuba’s generosity did not stop there, they contributed about 500 Cuban airport workers, advisors on every aspect of society, culture and technology, doctors who treated about half of the Grenadian population and trained Grenadians to become doctors, and over 200 scholarships to Grenadians to study in Cuba.[11] Rubert Bishop felt the direct impact of this because he accepted a scholarship to study prison administration in Cuba. [12]

Comic Propaganda spread by the CIA about the American Intervention in Grenada (front cover)

The construction of a new airport caught the U. S’s attention as Ronald Reagan cited an extra-long, military-aircraft-friendly runway. This was later used to justify the American Intervention.[13] Rubert strongly disagreed with the U. S’s assumption; “they [the U.S.] also were saying they [Grenada] was building a military base… this was not true at all! Grenadians were excited to have a new airport because we didn’t have an international airport. At the time, we only had this small airport in Grenville… it was called Pearls Airport. I remember Maurice Bishop use to speak about wanting bigger planes to come. That was one of his primary goals to get that airport, and he did get assistance from the Cubans to come build that airport. The air strip was completed at the time of the intervention”. [14] Rubert’s account of this highlights the how the U.S misinterprets Cuba’s assistance. Overall, the U.S thought that Cuba was assisting Grenada in developing and increasing its militarization, but this was not the case.

Then, on October 19, 1983, Bernard Coard, placed Maurice Bishop and other moderates under arrest. During a protest by people who supported Maurice Bishop, army troops massacred dozens of protesters, executed Bishop and two other cabinet members.[15] On the day of Maurice Bishop’s assignation, Rubert Bishop recalls working in the prison. Since the prison, he worked at was located on a high hill, he could look down at Fort Rupert. Hearing all the commotion from the prison, Rubert grabbed a binocular to see soldiers shooting through the crowd; “I remember seeing a gap between the crowd indicating that bullets were going through that area”. [16] Reagan administration feared that the chaos, threatened the medical students studying at a university in St. Georges.[17] But again Rubert claimed the U.S. exaggerated this; “The truth is the whole thing was distorted…at no time were the students at risk. Matter of fact there had soldiers ensuring their safety… yes, they had Grenadian soldiers ensuring their safety. We were surprised that American said that they were at risk… no one was attacking them there was nothing like that… that was definitely a lie!”[18]

US 82nd Airborne Division soldiers during the Invasion of Grenada, code named Operation Urgent Fury October 25, 1983 in St Georges, Grenada

Lastly, on November 25^th, 1983, Coard’s government collapsed and was replaced by one the U.S. deemed as acceptable[19], Additional Brands supports this notion as he says, “the White House claimed a victory for freedom and helped a conservative successor government clean up the mess the invasion cause”. [21] But according to Bishop, the successor that was put into power did the opposite, and  Rubert Bishop did not anticipate the long-term repercussions that were to come. Rubert Bishop recounts, “Right after the intervention what the American did … they [United States] put the GMP in place to run the country. He was not progressive, neither was he interested in the development of the country. They were actual installed after the Intervention and they actually brought down the country!… a lot of people did not like them”[20].

Overall, Rubert Bishop’s accounts of events before and after the American Intervention adds to the narrative Brands creates in his book, American Dreams. In addition, both Brands and Rubert distinctive perceptions, create a well-rounded remembrance of the American Intervention in Grenada. From Rubert Bishop’s point of view, as a citizen of Grenada, the American Intervention further perpetuated the decline of the country economically, especially as the U.S. appointed a political figure that did not have the countries’ interest in mind. One the other hand, the U.S. views the Grenadian Intervention as victory in their attempts to fight against communism. In fear that communist countries like the Soviet Union and Cuba were trying to expand and manifest their power, the U.S. was trying to prevent this.

Works Cited:

[1]Peepal Tree Press. “Merle Collins.” Merle Collins | Peepal Tree Press. Accessed April 23, 2017. http://www.peepaltreepress.com/authors/merle-collins.

[2] Interview with Professor Merle Collins (email), April 1^st, 2017

[3] Brands, H. W. American Dreams: The United States since 1945. New York: Penguin Books, 2011. (247)

[4] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[5] Zunes, Stephen. “Global Policy Forum.” The US Invasion of Grenada. October 2003. Accessed April 26, 2017. https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/155/25966.html.

[6] Zunes, Stephen. The US Invasion of Grenada

[7] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[8] Brands, H. W. American Dreams: The United States since 1945 (247)

[9] Zunes, Stephen. The US Invasion of Grenada

[10] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[11] Puri, Shalini. Grenada revolution in the Caribbean Present. Place of publication not identified: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016. (177)

[12] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[13] “1943 Pearls Airport: Grenada’s First Airport.” Caribbean Aviation. November 19, 2016. Accessed April 26, 2017. https://caribaviation.net/2016/07/22/1943-pearls-airport/.

[14] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[15] Zunes, Stephen. The US Invasion of Grenada. October 2003

[16] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[17] Zunes, Stephen. The US Invasion of Grenada. October 2003

[18] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[19] “United States invades Grenada.” History.com. Accessed April 26, 2017. http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/united-states-invades-grenada.

[20] Interview with Rubert Bishop (phone conversation), April 18^th, 2017

[21] Brands, H. W. American Dreams: The United States since 1945 (247)

1950s Hospitality and Hurricane Season

By: Ashlyn B. Buffum

Sydney Hinkle Buffum and her parents got a lot of questions about what she was doing with her life. Her parents would often say, “Oh she is married to a hotel man. They summer up in Rhode Island and winter down in Florida.”[1] Sydney and Robert C. Buffum helped Robert’s father, Frederick C. Buffum, run the family hotel, the Weekapaug Inn, until they took full ownership around 1965. During the era when they were apprenticed to the family hotel business, the 1950s became another boom for the hotel business, the middle class, and tourism. Despite this boom, during the1954 hurricane season the prosperity came to a screeching halt.

During the 1950s, the country was just coming off World War II and the Great Depression. The U.S. was experiencing a time of return to an emphasis on domestic life, a baby boom, and another technological revolution. Modern highways helped promote tourism, but older modes of transportation still mattered.  Buffum recalls, “people drove from the Midwest to come here [Rhode Island], but they also took the train”.[2]  She notes that many visitors arrived in this more traditional fashion from states “in the middle of the country,” like Illinois, Indiana and Ohio. [3] The ease of travel which was helped by the highway system resulted in more travelers.

A 1950s tourism add for Rhode Island (1955)

With this rise in highway systems and cars, the roadside motel became popular. “Families of the broad middle class took vacations, usually by car. They stayed at motor hotels—“motels”—located on highways rather than near downtown rail depots”.[4] Not only does car travel evolve, but also jet and planes. Spending money on ones children and vacations became the norm especially with the opening of Disneyland.[5] The 1950s were a “golden age” for tourism and the resort businesses around the country.[6] Vacationing families sought freedom from care, a complete rest, relief and recuperation.

Other new technologies evolved as well to help make the guests experience easier and more enjoyable. For example, in the Weekapaug Inn of the 1950s, there was a communication device called “an enunciator”.[7] Buffum recollects the many uses for the machine and says “ people that were in the hotel room had a wire that came and they had a box in the back office. If somebody rang the buzzer for ice or something like that the little arrow would flip up to the room number and then the bellhop would run down the hall and would get to the door and ask what he or she wanted. If they said they wanted ice, then he would take their ice bucket and go down and bring it back. He would get a tip on that. That would go on every single night”.[8]

It was a time for the hotels to be family run and “interactive” for guests. One of the rising inventions of the 1950s was the TV. Despite the rise of TV, there still might not be a TV in every room. Instead there was a singular room with a common TV which guests could use collectively. This results in televised events being shared by the guests as a collective body. Televised sporting events also rose in popularity during the 1950s. “Many sports events during the decade of the 1950’s were telecast during the day on weekends”.[9] The hotels would also have events like, “Saturday dances”.[10] Buffum remembers “ We would have a funny little band. They would clear all the tables and chairs out of the Sea Room and people would all dance Saturday night”.[11]

Another aspect of 1950s hotels that adds to the “interactive” experience for guests are communal bathrooms that are sometimes within hotels or motels. An example of this room set up can be seen on top floor of the Weekapaug Inn. This floor was known as the Bridge.[12] Though Sydney and Robert soon found a fatal flaw with the Bridge bathrooms when, “One very naughty boy and most rowdy was a minister’s son and he went in one time to the ladies’ room and he went under the stall doors. He locked all the doors. Then in the morning when all the women woke up and went to the bathroom they found all of the doors locked. All the old ladies didn’t think to crawl underneath the stall doors”. [13]

Vacationists coming to New England are primarily coming for “the peace and quiet of the ocean, bathing, mountain scenery, or rolling meadowland”, but during the 1954 summer season for hotels was anything but.[14] The first sign of trouble happened during June of the 1954 hurricane season. “A tropical storm developed rapidly in the west Gulf of Mexico on the 24^th of June and by early on the 25^th was of hurricane force. It moved inland south of Brownsville, Tex., early on the morning of the 25^th”. [15] This storm would be called Alice.[16] Next came hurricane Barbara, which hit the coast of Louisiana.[17] Another storm started to brew in the Atlantic Ocean, but no one knew how dangerous it would become. “The system developed from a tropical wave over the northeast Bahamas on August 25, 1954”. [18] The New England resort community and residents had been lulled into a sense of security during the rising prosperity of the 1950s. The residents of New England had forgotten the devastation of the 1938 hurricane. “No one had experienced that before. Of course ships had went down before, but nothing had really destroyed the land”.[19] Hurricane Carol hit the coast of New England on August 31, 1954. [20]

Photograph of Hurricane Carol
hitting the Coast of New England

As recounted in Robert Buffum’s book, a guest named Micky McQueenie Mathews recalls her experience in the hurricane, “That first summer I was to fall in love with this place of sunshine and the occasional storm. Along with my parents and four siblings we were spending a months vacation at the Inn when hurricane Carol hit with her fury. Upon arising I remember a few families packing their cars and heading for higher ground. I thought, “what sissies they are”—there is such excitement about a hurricane, especially when you are 14”. [21]

Robert Buffum, himself, recalls looking at the Weekapaug Inn during the storm, “The Inn was like a ship in deep water—pointing the way! There she is with guests aboard, pointing her bow into the sea and wind. Almost it appears looking toward the beach where the first inn was born and destroyed, saying, ‘I’m here, staying strong to protect those aboard’”.[22]

Hurricane Carol ripped through New England with force, “highest winds were at Block Island, RI where 130 mph was measured in gusts” and up into Canada [23]. The damage from the 1954 hurricane was tremendous. “The storm left 60 dead and over 460 million dollars of damage to property and crops in the North Atlantic States”. [24] Sydney remembers the damage that her little family endured during a storm and the damage that a hurricane can swiftly cause. Their 38-foot trimaran, Wings. “It was in the Stonington Harbor, but it dragged because it flipped over on one hull and then of course the trampoline and stuff in between acted like a sail. She had two hulls and one hull was up in the air and the trampoline between the two acted like a sail. The wind was coming down the Stonington Harbor so it just blew the boat right a shore and the water pushed the boat up onto the railroad tracks. We didn’t see the boat until the next day. We went to go look at it and someone came and said, “What is this boat doing on the railroad tracks” and of course Grand Bob [Robert C. Buffum] with his great sense of humor says, “Oh she was trying to get a ride on the train [down to New York]”.[25]

The day after newspapers began to report the damage of Hurricane Carol. Some of the numbers are too large to even comprehend. The front page of a paper later reads, “By states the number of affected families was given as 6,000 in Rhode Island, 3,760 in Massachusetts, 1,200 on Long Island in New York and 825 in Connecticut” [26]

Finally, Eisenhower calls a relief effort for the victims of the hurricanes. One newspaper reports, “President Eisenhower today ordered the federal civil defense administration “cut through any red tape” to provide aid for victims of the hurricane which hit the northeaster section of the United states [27]

New England Historical Society
Photograph of the aftermath

Finally when all the rain, wind, dust, and debris settled, there were 7 hurricanes that hit the Americas in the 1954 hurricane season. Hurricane Carol and Hurricane Hazel were so bad that their names were retired from further use.[28] The 1954 Hurricane season was one of the worst that ever hit the coasts of the United States. The 1950s was a time of both prosperity and destruction.

[1] Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, April 24, 2017.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 80.

[5] Ibid, 73.

[6] Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, April 24, 2017.

[7] Ibid.

[8] Ibid.

[9] Keller, Richard. “Sport and Television in the 1950’s: A Preliminary Survey,”29

[10] Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, April 24, 2017.

[11] Ibid.

[12] Ibid.

[13] Ibid.

[14] “Tranquility of New England Vacation.” New York Times, 10 May 1959, 33. [ProQuest]

[15] Walter R. Davis, “Hurricanes of 1954”, Monthly Weather Review (1954):370

[16]Ibid.

[17]Ibid.

[18] “1954-Hurricane Carol,” Hurricanes: Science and Society, accessed April 23, 2017, http://www.hurricanescience.org/history/storms/1950s/carol/

[19] Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, April 24, 2017.

[20]Davis, 370.

[21] Robert C. Buffum, The Weekapaug Inn: The Best of All Possible Worlds (Robert C. Buffum, 1999), 123.

[22] Ibid, 123.

[23] Davis, 372.

[24] Ibid, 372.

[25] Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, March 22, 2017.

[26] “11,785 Families Hit By Hurricane,” Daytona Beach Morning Journal September 9, 1954, 22.

[27] “Ike Tells CD Chief to Cut Through Red Tape” Spokane Daily Chronicle September 1, 1954, 1.

[28] “Retired Hurricane Names Since 1954,” NOAA, accessed April 27, 2017, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_history.shtml#retired

Selections from Interview Transcripts

-Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, March 22, 2017

Transcript

Q: Where were you when you heard that the Hurricane was coming?

A: We heard that the hurricane was coming and from Goshen, CT we drove down. We wanted to help since it was the first time they had gone through the hurricane since 1938.

Q: Were any of your possessions lost or damaged during the 1954 Hurricane season?

A: We did lose a bout up in Stonington it went up on the tracks. It tipped over. It was our Trimaran, Wings . We were not on the boat at the time it was broken. We took it out and tied it off as well as we could in the harbor over in Stonington. It was in the Stonington Harbor, but it dragged because it flipped over on one hull and then of course the trampoline and stuff in between acted like a sail. She had two hulls and one hull was up in the air and the trampoline between the two acted like a sail. The wind was coming down the Stonington Harbor so it just blew the boat right a shore and the water pushed the boat up onto the railroad tracks. We didn’t see the boat until the next day. We went to go look at it and Someone came and said, “What is this boat doing on the railroad tracks” and of course Grand Bob with his great sense of humor says, “Oh he was trying to get a ride on the train [down to New York]” We came by and picked it up and took it back to Cape Cod where it was rebuilt.

Q: Did the Weekapaug inn receive any insurance money for damages?

A: The insurance claimed that they wouldn’t pay. After the 1938 Hurricane he made sure to insure the new one [Weekapaug Inn] so that if anything would happen the insurance would cover the cost the repairs. Well they read the contract and it said if the occurrence or problem is off premises then the insurance statement does not have to cover the thing and the insurance salesmen didn’t tell him.. Of course the electricity went off from the wire that came down from Westerly and the town water didn’t work either, but that wasn’t on premises so they wouldn’t pay. So Grand Bob lost a whole weekend and then the people that piled out of there afterwards that didn’t come back for the last weekend of the season. So he lost quite a bit of money, but he didn’t lose a single shingle off the inn. So he actually the only thing he wanted was to get some restitution from money fast. Actually the insurance man was very upset because he didn’t realize that that was really a possibility. That he was only insured if the damage happened on premises. He didn’t read his own insurance policy. You have to read those things yourself sometimes. He [the insurance salesmen] felt very badly about it and he tried to do as much as he could, but it still didn’t help at all. I think they gave him a little bit more money then they ordinarily would have, but they didn’t have to pay the full amount that he lost.

Selections from Interview Transcripts

-Phone Interview with Sydney Hinkle Buffum, April 24, 2017.

Transcripts

Q: Was anything done to prevent this from happening again?

A: A westerly family had lots going down the beach and those that bought them. Bob went around and tried to get everyone to give back their beach area and create an association that they have now. And that’s why they own the beach because people gave them their land, which was no good to them really. The water washed over the whole bank along there. So nobody ever built out there. Bob said “no one is going to be allowed to build out here again” because lives were lost. He went around and got people to sign petitions that the land would never be built upon.

Q: What was the travel experience like in the 1950s?

A: People drove from the Midwest to come here, but they also took the train. There was a lot of people that came from the middle of the country, Illinois, Idiana, Ohio. It was a lot easier for people to travel. It was a golden age…No one had experienced that before. Of course ships and had went down before, but nothing had really destroyed the land

Q: What did people say about what you were doing?

A: What is Sydney doing? Oh she is married to a hotel man they summer in up in Rhode Island and winter down in Florida.

Q: Did you and Grandfather do anything special while you were running the Inn?

A: We carried on the traditions of the Inn. They always had Saturday dances at the Inn. We would have a funny little band. They would clear all the tables and chairs out of the Searoom and people would all dance Saturday night.

Q: Are there any differences in the hospitality business now vs. then?

A: there was a buzzer system. It’s called an enunciator. The people that were in the hotel room they had a wire that came and they had a box in the back office. If somebody rang the buzzer for ice or something like that. The little arrow would flip up to the room number and then the bell hop would run down the hall and would get to the door and ask what they wanted. If they said they wanted ice so then he would take their ice bucket and go down and bring it back. He would get a tip on that. That would go on every single night… The bridge (the third floor) of the inn had communal bathrooms down the hall. One very naughty boy and most rowdy was a minister’s son and he went in one time to the ladies’ room and he went under the stall doors. He locked all the doors. Then in the morning when all the women woke up and went to the bathroom they found all of the doors locked. All the old ladies didn’t think to crawl underneath the stall doors.

“Less and less human thinking”: Technology’s Role in the 1987 Stock Market Crash

By Ryan Cohane

New York Stock Exchange trader on Black Monday. Courtesy of Getty Images

October 19, 1987, otherwise known as Black Monday, was a frightening day for many. Brian Cohane had been working on Wall Street for 3 years at that point. He was a junior mortgage-backed-securities trader at Paine Webber Inc and recalls the technology that helped contribute to the crash. Cohane describes the beginning of a system where there was “less and less human thinking on things and we let computers do the thinking for us in terms of whether to buy or sell securities.” [1] Technology was not very prevalent on Wall Street when Cohane started working there. Throughout the 80s, the use of technology increased and helped contribute to Black Monday. In that one day alone, the Dow Jones Index dropped 508.32 points or 22.6%, losing over $500 billion of its value. [2] Markets around the world were affected and many feared that this would lead to another Great Depression. In American Dreams, H.W. Brands attributes the main reason for the crash to the high interest rates due to the trade and federal budget deficits. [3] However, a large part of the reason that Black Monday occurred was also the emergence of new technologies in the 1980s.

When Brian Cohane started on Wall Street, he did not have access to a lot of technology.

“Our technology was the phone, calculator, files… we would call some of the credit rating              agencies and get credit reports. Their credit reports of clients that we dealt with [were used] to back  up our own credit analysis, but that was it. We used computers to track numbers. If we assigned a    credit limit to a client, we would put that into a computer and the computer could track whether a    client’s exposure was within the limits we established. We didn’t really have spreadsheet analysis at  the time or the ability to go into databases and look up companies.” [4]

However, in the 80s the access to technology started to increase. With innovations such as the Bloomberg Terminal and the rise of the use of personal computers, technology became more integrated in the Wall Street process then ever before. While there were plenty of positives, such as more equal access to information and more efficiency, there were also computers taking over jobs that used to be done by humans. Technology could perform these jobs faster and more efficiently. [5] As technology became more ingrained in the industry, people became more comfortable using it. Thus, the rise of program trading was not too much of a surprise.

The commercial from 1986 shows how computers were becoming more advanced, but it also shows the limitations of the technology. The IBM PCjr could only run programs built for it, suffered from memory restraints and took up a lot of space. Courtesy of Youtube.

The New York Stock Exchange defines program trading as a trade containing fifteen or more stocks with a total value over $1 million. It started in the 1970s with people physically having to go to certain locations to make the trades. Program trading became more popular because it was less risky to trade a diversified portfolio rather than individual stocks, it was cheaper and the volume of trades was increasing. [6] In the 80s, more and more of the process began to be done on computers. Cohane describes it as “quantitate-based technical trading” and “very much computerized.” [7]

The headline of the New York Times from the day after Black Monday shows how people were concerned that they were entering another Great Depression. Courtesy of Proquest.

One of the strategies associated with program trading is portfolio insurance. This is an investment strategy, where computer models suggest acquiring more stocks during rising markets. When the market is falling, the models suggest the opposite. The idea was that the strategy would mitigate some of the risks involved in buying and selling stocks. Investors tended to deal more with the future market since it was cheaper and it would protect them against losses in their current stocks. The strategy helped contribute to the increase in selling in 1987, because “as computers dictated that more and more futures be sold, the buyers of those futures not only insisted on sharply lower prices but also hedged their positions by selling the underlying stocks. That drove prices down further, and produced more sell orders from the computers.” [8] All these actions in the future markets were not being immediately updated and recognized, since it was very time consuming and could incur transaction costs.

Program trading was completed through the Super Designated Order Turnaround (SuperDOT) system. The SuperDOT replaced the DOT in 1984 and was able to route orders to specialists on the trading floor and bypass floor brokers.  On October 19, 1987, the amount of sell orders was up dramatically due to the cycle brought on by portfolio insurance and the SuperDot began to fall behind. Trading in some stocks had to be suspended, because the quantity of sell orders was so overwhelming. [9] Investors were essentially blind. They were not able to obtain accurate and updated information about the conditions of the current market. Thus, many investors began to panic and just tried to get rid of their stocks and get out all together, exacerbating the issues.

Time featured Alan Greenspan on June 15, 1987, shortly after he was nominated by Ronald Reagan to be the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Courtesy of Time Magazine.

The Federal Reserve, headed by Greenspan, reacted by easing short-term credit and also helping the public confidence. Two days after the initial crash, Greenspan said the Federal Reserve “affirmed today its readiness to serve as a source of liquidity to support the economic and financial system.” Privately, the group also reached out to banks to encourage them to continue to lend per usual. The response helped prevent the economy from entering a depression or even a recession. Two years later, the longest bull market in the history of the United States was achieved. [10]

Circuit breakers were also introduced in markets due to Black Monday. Now, if a market declines by a certain percentage over some period of time, the circuit breakers will go into effect and halt trading. [11] As the events on October 19, 1987 showed, the problem was made worse because people were confused and immediately reacted by selling whatever they could. If the circuit breakers had been in effect, they might have stopped some of this. They are still in effect today, though there is some controversy over them. “People are afraid that if they don’t get out of their trades before the circuit breaker hits, they’ll get stuck with their position,” says Cohane, “so they may actually create more volatility.” [12]

With the advancements in computers and new technologies, program trading and portfolio insurance arose. At first there were no restrictions and they got out of control. Investors did not know how much selling was actually going on because of lagging systems and the disconnect between the current and future markets. Part of the problem was that the new technology was not yet advanced enough. Moore’s Law states that the number of transistors doubles approximately every eighteen months, which essentially means computing speed doubles over the same interval. [13] If the computers had been faster in 1987, investors would have had access to more relevant information and some of the effects of the crisis might have been mitigated.

There are multiple reasons for the crash and people still argue over which ones are the most important. However, the role of technology is valuable in understanding the crash as a whole. It can also be beneficial as we look towards a future where technology’s role is growing exponentially. Without the proper safeguards in place, there can be negative implications such as Black Monday. The relatively quick recovery that the Federal Reserve helped orchestrate might not be possible in the future. Thus, it is essential to look at an event like Black Monday and study what went wrong as well as examine technology’s role in order to ensure that there is no repeat.

[1] Phone interview with Brian Cohane, April 27, 2016.

[2] “October 19, 1987- Black Monday, 20 Years Later,” The New York Times, accessed May 1, 2015, <http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/nyregion/city_room/20071019_CITYROOM.pdf>

[3] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 265.

[4] Phone Interview with Brian Cohane, April 27, 2016.

[5] Phone Interview with Brian Cohane, April 27, 2016.

[6] Dean Furbush, “Program Trading.” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, May 6, 2015. Accessed May 3, 2016. <http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/ProgramTrading.html>

[7] Phone interview with Brian Cohane, May 6, 2016.

[8] Floyd Norris, “A Computer Lesson Still Unlearned.” The New York Times, October 18, 2012. Accessed May 4, 2016. <http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/19/business/a-computer-lesson-from-1987-still-unlearned-by-wall-street.html>

[9] Mark Carlson, “A Brief History of the 1987 Stock Market Crash with a Discussion of the Federal Reserve Response.” Federal Reserve, November 2006. Accessed May 1, 2016. <https://www.federalreserve.gov/pubs/feds/2007/200713/200713pap.pdf>

[10] Carlson, “A Brief History of the 1987 Stock Market Crash with a Discussion of the Federal Reserve Response.”

[11] Zach Guzman and Mark Koba, “When do circuit breakers kick in? CNBC Explains,” CNBC, January 7, 2016. Accessed May 4, 2016.

[12] Phone interview with Brian Cohane, May 6, 2016.

[13] H.W. Brands, American Dreams: The United States Since 1945 (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), 328.

More photos of the New York Stock Exchange on October 19, 1987: